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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Decision making and appeals  →  Thread

DWP having a go at minorities

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John Birks
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Welfare Rights and Debt Advice - Stockport Council

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Can you feel that?
Oh dear
Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah
Oh, ah, ah, ah, ah
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
Drowning deep in my sea of loathing
Broken your servant I kneel
DWP:  “Will you give in to me?”
It seems what’s left of my human side
Is slowly changing in me
DWP: “Will you give in to me?”
Looking at my own reflection
When suddenly it changes
Violently it changes (oh no)
There is no turning back now
You’ve woken up the demon in me
Get up, come on get down with the sickness
Get up, come on get down with the sickness
Get up, come on get down with the sickness

Mike Hughes
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Senior welfare rights officer - Salford City Council Welfare Rights Service

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Mr Finch - 13 March 2017 11:11 AM
Mike Hughes - 10 March 2017 02:31 PM

So, a rise in the recovery rate at the first attempt based on the fact this letter has been sent out will likely encourage the delusion that this is a great and successful idea but such a rise could be equally attributable to a change in regs; increasing number of POs at appeals; increasing numbers of visiting officers; increasing numbers of fraud officers being used as VOs, a specific structural problem being addressed e.g. o/ps following the death of a claimant and so on.

Regression to the mean. Especially if the policy is brought in when performance is at a low point.

Absolutely agree that’s exactly what it is.

Mike Hughes
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Gareth Morgan - 13 March 2017 11:44 AM
Paul_Treloar_AgeUK - 10 March 2017 03:00 PM

But vinyl is clearly superior to CD’s Mike.

Paul. You might be able to help me with a problem I’ve got.  Whenever I drive over a bump, the needle on my phonograph jumps and I get a scratching noise.  I was using my iPhone to play music but i understand that it’s not as good.  I’m also worried in case the police stop me when I’m winding up the machine as I understand that using a hand held device is now an offence.

Oh, where to begin :)

I think technically one should not use a wax cylinder (a phonograph) in a moving vehicle. However, that scratching noise… you may well have inadvertently invented 1920s Welsh rap. Gareth Lookin’ Chain; Mr. Phormula or similar.

Add an Audioquest Dragonfly or similar to your iPhone and it may well be every bit, er, similar.

Highly amused by the idea of you winding up machines or indeed the idea that using a hand held device is an offence. Does that apply to benefit calculators :)

Jon (CANY)
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Welfare benefits - Craven CAB, North Yorkshire

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Billy Durrant - 09 March 2017 01:14 PM
Jon (CHDCA) - 09 March 2017 10:44 AM

It’s a “nudge”, and it probably works.

Hmm, not in this case, it has really got my goat. This was sent to a woman with chronic low self-esteem issues who was doing Permitted Work.

I will write back and suggest that the B.I.T. change its name to Behaviour Under Limited Learning Stone Hearted Insight Team as it produces a more accurate acronym.

By saying that it probably “works”, I meant no more than that I believe that DWP’s relative collection rates probably go up (pending Mike citing evidence to the contrary :) )

If the recipients of these letters feel pressured or hectored into making a payment arrangement, or if instead of chucking the letter in the bin they feel compelled to seek advice on what to do next in order to avoid future (unspecified) adverse consequences ... then that it is all part and parcel of it “working”. The form of words in these letters is designed to make people feel uncomfortable, it’s not a bug it’s a feature.

I think no one in this thread feels that these sort of letters from government are appropriate, but what should we do about it? I don’t know about your specific case, but I suspect that any general arguments for DWP to change their approach will need to be based on more than “this strategy doesn’t work”.

Mike Hughes
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I think we’ve been here before.

http://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forums/viewthread/10288

past caring
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The nudge is certainly nothing new. Going back even further to threads on the old forums (it’s a shame these are no longer available as an archive) I can recall several threads about overpayments, recovery and fraud where it emerged;

- fraud sections/departments had office targets for ‘success’
- these took the form of both collective and individual (monetary) bonuses
- meeting - or failing to meet - such targets was an important factor in career progression, or lack of it
- one thing that counted as a ‘success’ was where any claim came to an end within six months of investigative action being taken. So it was commonplace for investigators to chap on neighbours’ doors, say who they were and ask about the ‘suspect’ claimant, fully conscious of the fact that the neighbours might do the right thing, inform the suspect of the snoopers’ visit with the result that the claimant then ended their claim voluntarily - i.e. out of sheer terror.

I’ve always thought that Jack London’s definition of a scab could equally well be used to describe DWP fraud investigators. That, or a paraphrase of George V. Higgins writing about the IRS in the US - ‘The mindset from the outset is that they know you have fiddled your tax return. Even after the most exhaustive investigation has thrown up nothing, it doesn’t mean you have a clean bill of health; it simply means you’ve been clever enough not to leave any evidence on this occasion.’

[ Edited: 14 Mar 2017 at 01:07 pm by past caring ]
Mike Hughes
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Wholly agree.

BC Welfare Rights
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Jon (CHDCA) - 13 March 2017 06:12 PM

By saying that it probably “works”, I meant no more than that I believe that DWP’s relative collection rates probably go up (pending Mike citing evidence to the contrary :) )

If the recipients of these letters feel pressured or hectored into making a payment arrangement, or if instead of chucking the letter in the bin they feel compelled to seek advice on what to do next in order to avoid future (unspecified) adverse consequences ... then that it is all part and parcel of it “working”. The form of words in these letters is designed to make people feel uncomfortable, it’s not a bug it’s a feature.

I think no one in this thread feels that these sort of letters from government are appropriate, but what should we do about it? I don’t know about your specific case, but I suspect that any general arguments for DWP to change their approach will need to be based on more than “this strategy doesn’t work”.

As usual you make perfect sense Jon (you definitely in the minority on this thread!); I was being facetious as I was irked by the letter. I also think that ‘nudging’ works. We all do it in our own jobs, http://www.makingeverycontactcount.co.uk/ ,for example, probably often without consciously realising that this is what we are doing.

I suspect that there is nothing that we can do about influencing the DWP in this regard because we are coming at it from a completely different angle to the people who are drafting these letters. They are only interested in increasing collection rates and the nudge drafters success or otherwise will be judged solely on that. We are more interested in the emotional health and wellbeing of our clients and service users and how letters like this can have a detrimental effect on them. I think that they already understand this, it’s just that this is the whole point for the likes of the BIT. It’s psychological pressure and if it achieves its aim then so what if there is a bit of collateral damage along the way?

Jon (CANY)
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Agreed, it’s going to be very difficult to change anything on this front.
For some reason, the example that most stood out me was the letter saying “we now expect you to have a bank account instead of a post office account ...”.  To most people, the “expectations” of the government department that pays your benefit, will have all the appearance of “requirements”.

Anyway, turning to the substantive issue: I think vinyl still has its place. There’s just something in the ritual of it ...

Mike Hughes
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Jon (CHDCA) - 15 March 2017 03:51 PM

Anyway, turning to the substantive issue: I think vinyl still has its place. There’s just something in the ritual of it ...

No one going to nudge you to streaming then? :)

Must admit it was the pain of the ritual which moved me away from vinyl 27 years ago. I’m a fan of music not ritual. There’s something ever so DWP like in the use of statistics to talk of a revival. 9 consecutive years of >50% growth and it commands a massive 3% of the market. USB turntables for converting vinyl to digital are the only growth area for turntable sales and actual hi-fi turntable sales are pretty much where they were in 1982. Better still, less than 50% of newly purchased vinyl is actually played!

Well, you did ask :)

Oh, you didn’t :)

Don’t start me on “nudge”!

stevenmcavoy
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MartinB - 13 March 2017 12:31 PM
Jon (CHDCA) - 09 March 2017 10:44 AM

It’s a “nudge”, and it probably works.

I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people,
I want to sleep with common people,
Like you.

had this exact thing in my head as I scrolled down.

great minds or fools seldom differ